


My Greatest Joy and Privilege

by apliddell



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Domesticity, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 20:59:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10749711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apliddell/pseuds/apliddell
Summary: Watson solves Holmes, and then Holmes solves Watson.





	My Greatest Joy and Privilege

“Good afternoon,” said I one sultry hot July afternoon. “My name is Jefferson Hope, and I am looking for a Mr. Sigerson, whom I was told I might find here.”

“Certainly sir,” replied the hotel manager in a lilting Italian accent. “Mr Sigerson is taking his lunch on the veranda. Will you be staying in the hotel this evening? Would you like to see your room before you join your friend?”

“Oh I need not go just now,” I answered. “Only send up my bags, and I shall join them later on.”

“Very good, sir.” The hotel manager rang the bell, and a porter appeared presently to take away my bags. After seeing off my luggage, I repaired to the veranda in search of Sigerson. 

Despite, or perhaps because of the heat of the day it was nearly empty. On the far side of it, where the shade of the neighboring grove was thickest, and a breath of sea breeze grew, a man and a boy sat at a table. Their plates had been pushed aside to give way to a backgammon board. So intent was the pair’s focus on their game that they did not notice me until I had stepped quite close and spoken aloud. 

“Mr Sigerson?”

The man looked up at me with keen, grey eyes, and his sensitive mouth smiled what some might call a knowing smile. “Yes?” he replied carelessly in an almost fluting voice that nonetheless hinted at a masterful spirit, “I am Sigerson.” 

“If you will pardon my intrusion, sir, my name is Jefferson Hope. I am an English writer, and I have been following the reports of your adventures most faithfully. I am hoping to record some of your stories in a book I am writing. With your kind permission, of course. If it is not too much trouble, would you be willing to submit to a short interview?”

Sigerson listened to my introduction, pulling on his short goatee with an expression of startlement. To my surprise, upon its conclusion, he burst into a merry peal of boyish laughter, “Well, well, well! I should be delighted, Doctor Hope; I should be delighted! Though I think perhaps we would be more comfortable in my private sitting room. If you would be good enough to join me there?”

“Certainly, if you wish it,” I replied reflexively, still rather taken aback. 

“Excellent!” Sigerson rose, then paused and addressed the crestfallen boy, “You were ahead, were you not, Paulo?” He handed the lad a silver coin. “Mind I shall want a rematch tomorrow. And just send up the maid with some coffee and biscuits. And maybe a little fruit and cheese.” Here he looked at me, “I don’t care for the way they do tea. Have you tried it? Most unfortunate. Well come along, Doctor!” 

“I never told you I was a doctor,” I remarked as we ascended the stairs. 

“Oh, did you not?” said Sigerson carelessly, producing the key to his rooms. “One picks up these little notions somehow.” He let me into his apartments ahead of him, “Pray make yourself comfortable, Doctor Hope. Perhaps the basket chair? Very nice. May I offer you a cigar? I understand these Toscanos are very popular among the writerly types.” 

The maid entered with a coffee service and a platter of fruit and cheese and biscuits as Sigerson lit the cigar for me. When she had stepped out and shut the door behind her, Sigerson took his own chair and rubbed his hands together with relish. 

“Now we have our refreshments; we can begin our interview.” 

“Indeed,” I replied, taking a notebook and pencil from my pocket. 

My companion leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He smiled at me confidentially and I leaned in as well. “Good, Watson,” he murmured. “Very good. Excellent. This energy does you credit. I ought to have known you better.” 

“Well, yes!” I retorted, dropping all pretense. “So you should have known me better, Holmes!” I rose from my chair and began to pace about the room in my excitement, “This is unworthy of you, Holmes! A cruel and paltry trick I would never have believed of you! What does this mean? ‘Pain to my friends’!” I touched my breast where I had thought, until a very few minutes earlier, that I kept my friend’s last earthly words to me. “Pain to your friends indeed! Can you tell me how it is that I wrote your obituary, and here I find you ten months later? In Italy, hiding behind that ridiculous goatee and playing backgammon with a page. It’s too bad of you, Holmes! It is really too bad!” 

A little of my ire drained out of me when I turned back to my friend. His head was sunk upon his breast, his mouth unhappily downturned. He looked the picture of contrition. Holmes rose when he saw me looking at him and stepped toward me, his hands held out in supplication, his grey eyes bright. “My dear friend,” he said in a voice husky with intense emotion. “I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea you would be so affected.” 

When I spoke again, my voice was as altered as his, “Affected? How could I fail to be affected, Holmes?” Holmes seemed unable to reply. “Have I disappointed you in the past? Did you fear I would betray you?”

“No!” Holmes hesitated, trying to find words. “You have never disappointed me, Watson. Never failed me. However hard I have leaned upon you, however many difficulties I have piled upon your shoulders, you have never fallen short. It was not your courage, nor your steadfastness that gave me pause.”

“Pray continue,” I replied in sarcastic imitation of Holmes. “Which of my virtues was it that gave you pause?”

Holmes stepped toward me, rubbing his long, thin hands nervously together, “Won’t you sit down? You are weary from your journey. You have had a shock. You are not quite well.” He gestured to the chair I had recently exited and continued coaxingly, “We shall have it all out, only you must not excite yourself so.” 

My temper flared up again, “Damn it, Holmes! I am not some swooning fair maiden of a client to be cajoled and charmed! I insist you explain yourself. How came you out of that horrible cauldron? The cliff was sheer, and there were your footprints and his leading to the edge and none returning. There was the struggle, plain as anything. And there was your note on your walking stick. You went over the falls.” I paused, nearly overcome. “You died. I. I had almost learnt to believe it.”

“And yet, here we are,” Holmes said quietly but with a note of pride and excitement that I, for all our late separation, knew him too well to miss. “Here you are. Come down into Hades with your lyre to swim the Styx and bear me out again.” 

“I am not here to rescue you. I am here to investigate the murder of my-” I paused. “You have not been murdered. Why am I here, Holmes? How are you here?” 

Holmes in his usual way had always been a man of a thousand kindnesses, both enormous and incidental, but I had never seen so much of his tender heart as I saw in the look he turned on me, “When I had escaped the interview with Moriarty with my life, I saw clearly my duty to eliminate his influence in the world, to the best of my humble abilities. Some of his agents remain at large. I must do what I can to bring them to justice. I could not ask you to share in that.” 

“But whyever not?”

“Because you would. Whatever I asked, you would grant. Because you always do. Because I could not tear you from your life.”

“Ah yes,” said I with asperity. “You could not tear me from Mrs Watson.”

Holmes frowned, “From your practice, from your friends. From your fireside. Your bull pup. To go into danger and uncertainty? How could I suggest it? And you would have joined me without a thought.” 

I shook my head impatiently, “Why should I not? I will now, if you will have me.”

My friend stared and coloured, “You will?”

I nodded stiffly, “If you will have me, I should consider it the greatest honour of my life.” 

Holmes seemed overcome. He lowered his head and pressed one hand to his heart and for many moments he did not speak. “Very well then,” he said, reaching out to clasp my hand between his. “Thank you, John. Yes. Forgive me.” I nodded and bowed over our joined hands. Holmes released me, “Won’t you sit, and let me help you to some refreshment and tell you about my adventures?”

“Either the food is very nice,” I said, regaining my seat, “or you did not finish your lunch. You have mentioned the food so often since we came into the room; I begin to suspect you of an agenda.”

Holmes chuckled heartily and began to pile a plate with food from the tray, “Do you care for figs, Watson? These are remarkably sweet and refreshing.”

 

....

 

“Tell me something, Watson,” Holmes said comfortably, puffing at his cigar after I had finished my meal, and he had finished his tale. “Why did you mention Mrs Watson?”

“Oh,” I frowned, rather confused. “I spoke in bitterness; do not mind it.”

Holmes stretched his lean legs forward and blew a smoke ring, “You never did like her, poor creature.”

“I never could see why you found it necessary to deceive my readers in that regard, Holmes. And when you generally deplore any form of sentimental embellishments regarding your work at all.” 

“The deplorable Mrs Watson.” Holmes shrugged his shoulders, “I think you must have some notion of why I would suggest you invent her, or you would not have mentioned her when you did.” 

“You would, I think,” I replied, “find fewer mysteries in the world, if you did not imagine the rest of us to be as cunning as yourself.”

“A touch, Watson,” cried Holmes, pressing his hand to his heart again. “A distinct touch!”

I smiled and puffed at my own cigar, “Do tell me what I think. I am all attention. I believe I am even cleverer in your stories than you are in mine.”

“You will not try and deduce what I have deduced?” At my answering groan, Holmes chuckled merrily, “Very well, very well. I suppose it is not quite the thing to make a game of a friend.”

“Not quite the thing, Holmes, no, I should say not.” 

My friend leaned back in his chair and stretched, “Ring the bell, won’t you, Watson? I think I could do with a little wine. Fine evening, is it not? I do wish I had my fiddle. Supper tonight and not dinner, I should say, if you are agreeable, Watson. And perhaps you’d like to join me on a ramble to take in a little charming local colour? Ah, excellent. It is so good to have a friend on one’s arm again.”

 

… 

 

Holmes did indeed take my arm for our walk, and we strolled through the village most companionably, my friend seeming to know it as if he had always known it. Holmes inclined his head toward mine and murmured deduced abbreviated biographies of the few people we passed in the road as he lead me into the dense orchard of apricot trees that ran along the edge of the village. 

The air was sweet with the smell of the ripening fruit, and beneath the faint evening moon, the leaves seemed to shiver under the wind. Holmes was moved by the idyll; he hummed softly, something I thought I knew, and sighed in mute satisfaction. 

“You are in high spirits, Holmes,” I remarked as my friend paused to put his nose to a late, low-hanging blossom. “Are we working?”

Holmes threw his head back and laughed, “You are scintillating this evening, Watson! You have grown positively satirical.” 

“Perhaps I am in high spirits also.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” agreed Holmes. “We are so often in agreement.”

“Quite often,” I said, with an arch of the eyebrow. 

My friend smiled, “I believe most would call us a very united pair, though if you insist it is merely that you know me so intimately and not that we think so very much alike, I will not venture to contradict you.” 

“New levels of restraint, my dear fellow. Truly you outdo yourself.” Holmes renewed his hilarity, and the sound was so gay and infectious that I could not help joining him. When our laughter subsided, Holmes fell into a rather dreamy silence, and we walked together quietly for some minutes, enjoying the sweetness of the the air and the fine, drowsily rising evening. 

“The moon is very near tonight,” Holmes broke the silence and halted to gaze up into the sky. “It looks nearer. Larger, lovelier. Would you agree?” 

I looked also, “I had it on fairly good authority that you do not care about such things. A waste of brain power that could be devoted to your work.”

“Ah John,” my friend turned his dreamy look on me, “There is more to the world than test tubes and monographs and blood stains. Under the proper tutelage, one can learn to care.” As he spoke, my companion reached down and took my hand. 

Though welcome, the gesture was one I had come to associate with crisis, “Sherlock?” 

He smiled at me, “Do not be afraid to know what you see, John.” 

“You are calling me John,” I said, when I could find my voice. “Why are you calling me John?”

In answer, my friend pressed my hand, then brought it to his lips and kissed and held it to his heart, “Do you not know, John? Can you not feel my ardour?” At these caresses, my heart thrilled in me so that for many moments, I was unable to speak. His grey eyes grew brighter as I looked into them, “Speak to me, dearest. Dearest and best loved, you will be to me always. Only speak, John. Tell me your heart.” He pressed my hand more firmly, “Do you love me?” 

Try as I would, I could not speak. I covered Sherlock’s hand with mine, stepped closer to him, and kissed him tenderly on the lips.


End file.
